Thursday, August 8, 2013

Elysium Review

Neill Blomkamp’s latest dystopian future film “Elysium” has
a good concept and is well made but in the end Blomkamp doesn’t take it
anywhere very interesting or refreshing. It’s not a bad film by any means, I
was never flat out bored, though I couldn’t help but feel a little let down by
its outcome. This is the same way I felt about Blomkamp’s 2009 feature film
debut “District 9.”

The setup is solid. The
year is 2154 and Earth (from what we can tell) has been reduced to slums full
of crime and poverty. That’s where ninety nine percent of the population lives.
However, not too far from Earth there lies a floating space sanctuary known as
Elysium. This is where the one percent live perfect lives; no crime, no
sickness (there are machines somewhat reminiscent of tanning beds that heal all
diseases), nobody gets old.

“District 9” was an allegorical look at South African
Apartheid, except instead of the Afrikaners being oppressed it was an
extraterrestrial race known as Prawns. This time Blomkamp is targeting the upper
class. The Elysium residents are neatly dressed unsympathetic robots, while the
Earthlings are oppressed. One of Elysium’s prominent residents, a politician
named Delacourt (Jodie Foster) is especially unsympathetic towards the Earthlings
and takes harsh measures when they try to sneak into the sanctuary. In an early
scene, Delacourt calls on the help of a mercenary Kruger (Sharlto Copley) to
shoot down three ships full of Earthlings desperate to get into Elysium. Forty-six
people are killed and she doesn’t even bat an eye. She’s bad news.

So, enter Max (Matt Damon) our lower class everyman turned
hero to set things right. One day while working at his menial factory job
(where they build the very robotic police officers that keep them down) he’s
exposed to a deadly amount of radiation and is given five days to live. His
boss, John Carlyle (William Fitchner), a resident of Elysium sent down to
supervise, couldn’t care less so Max decides he needs to get to Elysium and
heal himself. Of course it’s not that simple, it never is. In order to get an
illegal ticket and I.D. he and few other criminal types (but they’re part of
the oppressed Earth population, so they’re the good guys) must hijack John and
extract information from his mind containing a plan that could possibly bring
equality to both the populations. But the mission won’t be easy, not with
Kruger and his cronies on his tail. As cool as the mind hijacking is (they
extract the information using a flash drive type device which they can then
plug into a computer) it’s one of those science fiction-y ideas that warrant
its own movie. Blomkamp has enough here already, so it’s not entirely
necessary.

As I said before, “Elysium” is well made. Blomkamp’s
direction is sleek and moves at a comfortable pace. On just a simple sci
fi/action movie level “Elysium” can be quite entertaining and I’m sure fans of
“District 9” will like this one just as much, or maybe more. The production
design by Phillip Ivey is spot on, capturing the neat cleanliness of Elysium
and the rugged, dirt covered slums of Earth. There are plenty of cool gadgets
and futuristic technology (bullets that explode before they hit you, flash
drives that can be inserted into human heads) that general audiences will eat
up. And Damon is always a reliable actor for these everyman-turned-action-hero
roles. He plays Max with unshowy honesty, yet he doesn’t take the role too
seriously, sprinkling in some humor here and there. Like with Denzel
Washington’s recent performances, Damon can play Max in his sleep and that’s
not a bad thing at all.

My main problems with “Elysium” have to do with the way
Blomkamp approaches the concept. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with doing
it from the point of the view of the oppressed lower class but at the same time
it’s too easy. The Earthlings are the victims and the Elysium-ites are cold,
heartless monsters. I would have liked to see Blomkamp approach it from a
different angle, maybe from the point of view of someone on Elysium, or at the
very least bring some more dimension to the orbiting sanctuary. We never really
get to see how the world works and how its residents interact with one another
and what they do everyday. They can’t all be bad, right?

Aside from her character being a one-note villain, Foster’s
entire performance feels phoned in. It’s not to say she’s all-bad but it didn’t
seem like she was putting much effort into it. Maybe that’s a result of under writing,
but I hardly got anything out of her except for a predictable (and slight)
feeling of anger because of how bad she is. As for Copley? The man is no doubt
a talented up and coming actor that will keep on getting talented. In the three
movies he’s been in, “District 9,” “The A Team” and this he plays completely
distinctive characters. Too bad the character of Kruger doesn’t give him much
to do except to be menacing bad guy.

Which is a shame because there is potential there for a
better-developed character. In fact, I think Blomkamp could have made him the
hero (or antihero) of the story. Even though he’s bad he’s also just a hired
gun for Delacourt, he too lives in the slums with the rest of the oppressed.
Making him the protagonist would have added some additional grittiness to the
picture and would have made a more nuanced hero. As good as Damon is, Max is
too clean (even though he has a criminal history). Right away when we see Damon
we know we’re going to like him and root for him. Kruger on the other hand is
scummy and repulsive (sporting long hair and bushy beard, with scars on his
face) he’d have to earn the audience’s trust and respect as a hero.

I respect Blomkamp as a filmmaker. After only two films he’s
shown that he has talent and I appreciate that he’s trying to bring ambition
and intelligence to a big budget summer sci fi actioner (in the same way Ridley
Scott did with “Prometheus” last year and Christopher Nolan with “Inception” in
2010) but with “Elysium” he isn’t ambitious enough. It’s easy to make villains
out of the wealthy and victims/heroes out of the poor but I would have liked to
see a more nuanced view of these coexisting worlds and their inhabitants.